Reeps One

Reeps One is the stage name of Harry Yeff, a British artist based in London whose work centres on beatboxing, vocal experimentation and digital installation. He is known for exploring the relationship between the human voice and technology, often using performance to examine human-machine collaboration and the development of voice-based art.

Career and practice

Reeps One works across performance and technology-driven projects, and his output is shaped by an ongoing interest in the evolution of the human voice. He joins the Experiments in Art and Technology programme at Bell Labs in 2020, where he researches creative uses of artificial intelligence and machine learning. His work in this area includes the documentary We Speak Music, made with Bell Labs and Simon Weldon, which builds towards a musical chess match and a performance with an AI artist twin called Second Self in the anechoic chamber at Bell Labs in New Jersey.

He also co-authors the Oxford Academic paper Beatboxers and Guitarists Engage Sensorimotor Regions Selectively When Listening to the Instruments in November 2018. During a TED Talk in 2019, he discusses having the fastest recorded use of the human diaphragm, a discovery linked to MRI research carried out with Dr Sophie Scott during the making of We Speak Music. That work examines his beatboxing technique known as the Inward Drag.

Competitions, residencies and collaborations

Reeps One wins the UK Beatbox Championships in 2009 and defends the title in 2010. By 2019 he completes his third artist residency at Harvard University. He collaborates with a wide range of artists and institutions, including Damon Albarn, Mike Patton, University College and the United Nations.

Major performances and projects

In January 2020, Reeps One directs and performs Voices Of Light to close the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. Later in 2020, he gives the closing performance on the first day of GitHub Universe, presenting A new virtuoso, a work featuring five pieces in which he beatboxes alongside syntactic voices created by machine learning models. In 2023, he directs the world’s first AI-driven international ballet in collaboration with Leipzig Opera House. In 2024, he performs a human-and-machine collaboration piece at the TIME Magazine 100 Most Influential People in AI event at the Museum of the Future in Dubai.